Audio compression (data): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:38, 26 February 2004

Revision as of 10:59, 11 March 2004

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== Lossless Compression ==

InCompared contrast towith [[image compression]], lossless audio compression algorithms are not nearly as widely used in audio compression. The primary users of lossless compression are [[audio engineer|audio engineers]] and those consumers who disdain the quality loss from lossy compression techniques such as [[Vorbis]] and [[MP3]].

First, the vast majority of sound recordings are natural sounds, recorded from the real world, and such data doesn't compress well. In a similar manner, [[photo]]s compress less efficiently with lossless methods than computer-generated images do. But worse, even computer generated sounds can contain very complicated [[waveform]]s that present a challenge to many compression algorithms. This is due to the nature of audio waveforms, which are generally difficult to simplify without a (necessarily lossy) conversion to frequency information, as performed by the human ear.